How to use Storify for storytelling: Two examples of Obama SOTU address story

A curated story can be a good narrative piece with the collection of live tweets playing a supporting role; it’s less effective if the story is mostly a collection of “what he said, what she said.” Two Storify stories of Obama’s State of The Union address may serve to illustrate this point.

In a story produced by a journalism student, the piece is organized into four sections: the issues, flying solo, a touching finale, and reaction. The story producer basically “narrates” the story and, when needed, brings up relevant tweets and other materials to support or supplement the narration.

In another story produced by NBC News, we basically see a collection of “what he said, what she said” sorted under several subheads. The whole piece does not have any other contents and contexts.

The two actual Storify stories are embedded below on this page; please note you need to move your mouse over each story and scroll down to view the story.

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About Mu Lin

Dr. Mu Lin is a digital journalism professional and educator in New Jersey, United States. Dr. Lin manages an online marketing company. He also manages MulinBlog Online J-School (www.mulinblog.com/mooc), a free online journalism training program, which offers courses such as Audio Slideshow Storytelling; Introduction to Social Media Marketing; Writing for the Web; Google Mapping for Communicators; Introduction to Data Visualization; Introduction to Web Metrics and Google Analytics.